Adolf Portmann traces how biology changed the way human beings understand themselves. He begins with Enlightenment natural history and the Encyclopedists, then follows the questions Darwin opened about the age of the Earth, heredity and the emergence of life. He asks how the experimental study of life relates to the study of animal behavior and experience.
Adolf Portmann — 2 recordings in the archive.
Related reading: Biologie und Geist by Adolf Portmann.
The three planned programmes are intended to reflect on our view of man and, in particular, the increasingly powerful role of modern the study of nature in such a reflection. The starting point for us is the age that is called the Enlightenment, for example, without wanting to stick strictly to this limit, i.e. the middle of the 18th century. It is marked by an enormous scientific work, the encyclopedia or the dictionary of sciences, arts and professions. 28 richly illustrated volumes were published in the years 1751 to 72. And this giant work will remain connected with the name of the French philosopher Denis Diderot and with the philosopher and mathematician d'Alembert. A little later the Encyclopaedia Britannica came out as a counterpart to this French work, somewhat smaller, 1768 to 70, but later enormously expanded. We must remember this turning point, because it is already the result of a very great upswing to a completely new conception of nature and man, which will then also be occupied in the subsequent two broadcasts. So in our first overview we follow the general development of the world view from that time onwards, in particular with regard to the natural sciences. In the second survey, we examine the profound changes in consciousness, especially the consciousness of the researchers themselves in these two centuries from 1750 to today. And finally, in the last overview, I would like to try to outline the development of a new, a concrete human image of nature research and to distinguish the ancestor stages, as the biologist imagines in the present. Now to our first overview. Anyone who wants to know the situation of the occidental man in the time of the so-called Enlightenment, in the period marked by the encyclopedia, must fully understand the contrast with the previous centuries. The centuries before the encyclopedia, and this basically concerns the entire Christian era, are characterized by the political and ecclesiastical consolidation of a Christian world view. And this consolidation in turn is characterized by a very hard and steady struggle against what one has called, for example, the scientific curiosity, the desire to know. This begins very early. I may perhaps examine the situation with a quote from St Augustine about 400 of our Common Era. Augustine writes: There are people who leave all virtue and believe in ignorance about the nature of God and in order…